Sunday, October 2, 2011

I plowed through a number of films in September as late Summer and early Fall battled each other outside my window (I am happy to report that as of today Fall has won). Of the 2011 films I caught up with the best was easily Drive, which I posted on here. I also greatly loved The Ward, Contagion and Moneyball. The biggest surprise among the new batch of films I watched was Blitz, a terrific Jason Statham British thriller that barely got a theatrical release here. The worst of the 2011 bunch was easily the extremely disappointing Cowboys and Aliens and I had a lot of problems with the could have been great Skateland as well as the Straw Dogs remake, a needless retread that removed nearly all the subtext that made the original so great.

Among the pre-2011 films I watched for the first time, my favorites were Joe Sarno's Confessions of a Young American Housewife, the chilling late sixties British work Girly, the stand-up John Waters vehicle This Filthy World, the undervalued Keira Knightley film Last Night, Bill Maher's incredible Religulous, Stephen Frear's masterful The Hit, Tim Roth's brutal The War Zone, the French fact-based chiller Them, and the Tom Hardy British crime mini-series The Take.

I watched a number of less than great films as well with the worst of the bunch being Assault Girls, LD 50 Lethal Dose, Pussycat, Pussycat I Love You (a terrible sequel to one of my favorite films), Satan's Blade, Son of Sam (what has happened to Ulli Lommel?) and the cult-favorite The Boondock Saints, a film I hope I never have to watch a frame of again.

Here are the complete lists for those interested and, as always, consider anything with a three-star rating or more as recommended.

3 comments:

Haha, nice to see that you loathed Boondock Saints as much as I did. When I saw that I was hanging out with a bunch of people who thought that was the new "greatest movie ever" -- but it's not just "not good" it's deeply, wrongly bad.

On the other hand, I have Sarno's "Confessions" sitting on my shelf unwatched, and your 4-star comment on that one means I think it might get a watch tonight.

I have THE WARD scheduled for this month and I'm really looking forward to it. Glad to see another who enjoyed THE HIT from '84. Since I was entertained with this year's THE KILLER ELITE (surprisingly), I'll have to take in BLITZ.

I have to say, after re-watching the original STRAW DOGS on Blu-ray Disc recently, I really don't have any motivation to catch the remake in the theater.

No love for Pussycat, Pussycat? Damn! Just kidding, I'm not surprised at all. Not only does the sequel not hold a candle to the original, it doesn't even hold a match. It is a colossal failure in every way but I find it totally entertaining and charming in its own terrible way.

I am the editor and co-creator of the quarterly print only publication Art Decades as well as the author of the upcoming From Emmanuelle to Chabrol: Sylvia Kristel in the Seventies. I'm also the creator of a number of film and music blogs including Moon in the Gutter, Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience, The Sylvia Kristel Archives and Harry Moseby Confidential. I live in Colorado with my wife Kelley and our three dogs Maizie, Topper and Ziggy Pop.